Posted by: Rosethorn on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 07:59 PM There are very few genres and very few settings of games I won't play and love. Until Chronicles of Riddick, I had no interest in first person shooters or stealth, but that game changed my willingness to work through the problems with controls. I love a good strategy title. Role-playing games give me the giddies. MMORPG's are going to always be one of my great loves. Simulations, while not tops on my list, occasionally make it onto my must play list. I'll even play a few sports games, although traditional sports are not my cup of tea. I love to explore prehistoric caves, pad through modern buildings, teleport onto futuristic planets and sail the high seas. What I'm trying to say here is, I love just about every type of game, although loving each game depends on its own value.
There are very few genres and very few settings of games I won't play and love. Until Chronicles of Riddick, I had no interest in first person shooters or stealth, but that game changed my willingness to work through the problems with controls. I love a good strategy title. Role-playing games give me the giddies. MMORPG's are going to always be one of my great loves. Simulations, while not tops on my list, occasionally make it onto my must play list. I'll even play a few sports games, although traditional sports are not my cup of tea. I love to explore prehistoric caves, pad through modern buildings, teleport onto futuristic planets and sail the high seas. What I'm trying to say here is, I love just about every type of game, although loving each game depends on its own value.
The one sweeping exception for me is historical modern war games. Regardless of the genre, if its based on any military conflict in the past 100 years, I cannot play it. I can barely sit through the opening movie. The games that get me the worst are those that feature a specific individual with a face and a history who may or may not have been an actual part of the conflict. Let's take Call of Duty: Finest Hour for example. I've heard great things about this title. It's a shooter and I'm starting to really enjoy shooters. So, I figured I would check it out. I had a vague perception that it was a historical modern war shooter, so I was expecting it. However, as the opening movie played, I became more and more disturbed. It's set in World War II and the game begins from the perspective of one of the heroes. You are sitting in a boat surrounded by other men. You follow your captain as gunfire and bombs land around you. It's a beach that belongs in nightmares. Then I died. It was too much for me to take. I turned the game off.
I know I am not alone in my distaste for this setting. Historical modern war movies are generally the realm of the male audience. Women loved Arthur, Troy, North and South and Alexander. These are war movies, but they don't turn us off the way Full Metal Jacket, Pearl Harbor and Apocolypse Now do. There are exceptions -- Saving Private Ryan was a great hit with females everywhere. But as a general rule, if its has atomic bombs and guerilla warfare, the audience will be dominated by testosterone. So, it follows that women would be much less likely to play games in this setting. Even though female gamers tend to be slightly less girly than your average woman, we still are girly enough to admit Johnny Depp is hot in Pirates of the Caribbean and that we love Pieces of the Heart. We share a lack of interest in historical modern war movies with our non-gaming counterparts.
What I don't understand is why. I can't point to a specific thing that turns me off from this setting. Why can I get a thrill off of decapitating vampires with my blade in Blood Rayne 2 or watching an alien be decimated by my pistol in Halo 2 but not the same in Call of Duty or Men of Valor. You might argue that its because I'm not killing humans in those two games, but I enjoy Swat 4 and Counterstrike just as much as I do Blood Rayne 2 and Halo 2. I got a real kick out of Manhunt -- which is gratuitously violent. Chronicles of Riddick has you beating the pulp out of men and watching the blood spatter the ground everywhere. Also, why is this an almost universal response by females. Why do we dislike this setting so much? Do women possess sensitivities to things that have taken place in the past 100 years that are real that men do not? These are my questions that are currently unanswered.
I would love to hear from women who dislike playing these games as well as men and women who love them.
